Skip to main content

Just One Sleeve Away

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #222 (congratulations, Carrie!!!). Come and see the other poems!



It's madness. You can see it.
You can't see the music in that spiral.
I can. *sigh* 
Just like you can see the smoke.
The kids'll be here soon.
Then we'll hide it in the rack. 
Play something safe. Sinatra.
There's nothing safe in Vegas.
We're not in Vegas. This is Texas.
Seedy, oil-town Texas. And this?
This particular spiral is madness
out where the cows won't go.
Give it here. I'll sleeve it.
I don't even like the water. 
It's brown and thick and rolls
like it wants you off-balance.
Like it knows the oil's moving through.
You come in smelling like salt
and staring at the yard 
until even I think it's tilting.
That salt's good for us.
But this--I heard him play.
He's nowhere near here.
I bought him a guitar at seven.
But she took him, sold it. 
Bought that fiddle. 
And then the devil taught him. 
Put it away. The kids are here.


It's a dark August morning and the dogs are doing their best to snooze underfoot while I'm typing and listening to YouTube. They're already putting up Christmas in Michael's (I was picking up some stamps for the zine I'm working on) and all I can think is we can spin as fast as we want...we're still going to go through it. 

-- Chrissa (wyndolynne)

Comments

  1. Carrie BurttAugust 6, 2022 at 6:51 PM

    I can feel the heat of the sun and the fire of the passion of playing that fiddle in your lines Chrissa! Wonderful!! Your note at the end makes me think of the Frost quote, "the only way out is through"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gillena CoxAugust 6, 2022 at 10:09 PM

    Luv the dodging and arrival of the kids at the end. Who wpuld think mom and dad played that kinda music in that Texas heat😁😁😁

    Nic one

    Much💖love

    ReplyDelete
  3. FireblossomAugust 7, 2022 at 1:23 PM

    Robert Johnson and Jimmy Page can relate, or so the scuttlebutt says!

    ReplyDelete
  4. robkistnerAugust 8, 2022 at 12:43 AM

    MuSic and, more muSic ir makes the world a wonderful place! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Marion HortonAugust 8, 2022 at 3:41 AM

    I now have Charlie Daniels in my head 🎻! Love this Chrissa.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Susie ClevengerAugust 10, 2022 at 9:50 AM

    Music makes the world go round. I carries emotions and sounds that speaks to whoever interprets it to their life and mood. This is great writing, so visual and engages the ear. I too am hearing Charlie Daniel's. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Treacle Season

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #190 ,  hosted this week by Carrie. Keaton was great in that show—the one with wings— Where he was constantly a [man]child on a ledge  dreaming an angel who became a superhero.   She was a sarcastic (fake?) angel—it was the 80s— But always good, on time, her lessons easy, Easy as it would have been for him to fall.   The metaphor so obvious...but I didn't get it. Nor the easy and obvious good. (/s)   I watch the TV movie every other December Remembering believing in easy And crushing on this character, that city...   Angels should be sweet, sarcastic figures, knowing (like nurses and social workers) we prefer Sleeping on the ledge, reckless to call for "heroes." To clear up any confusion:  there is no Michael Keaton movie we watch every holiday season. Although, if there were...I'd probably watch it.  -- Chrissa
16 comments
Read more

Turn Away

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in the margins of
15 comments
Read more

Out of the Den

  For the Sunday Muse, #166. Deep in the rain, stand and drink. Water that rises carries the need, Remember the trail where it sinks; Deep in the rain, stand and drink. There is a rumble outside as I write. Arthur has come to check on me and has curled up beneath the desk--once James settles down, he'll probably find a more comfortable place to snooze or shiver through the rain. I am, this week, angry. You'd think a wolf would be a goad for finding words for it; not yet. I didn't expect to reemerge and be angry. I expected tears, the occasional panic attack, relief. Instead I am furious and couldn't say why.  -- Chrissa
16 comments
Read more